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Elite: Frontier kickstarter

Classic video game Elite is getting a 21st Century makeover.David Braben, one of the creators of the original, is seeking £1.25m ($2m) via Kickstarter to fund the updated version.The updated version will involve the same mix of interstellar travel, trading, piracy and spaceships as the original 8-bit game.Those who pledge cash to the project will also get a chance to shape the development of the updated version."Elite is a game that I've wanted to come back to for a very, very long time," Mr Braben told the BBC. "It's the sort of game that I would very much like to play today."

I never played the original, but I can assume this is a good thing right?

I think that's a fair statement to make in some ways. X tries to do way too much and vastly over complicates things by having an absolutely abysmal interface and stupidly enforcing its crappy lore on the player (really, call them minutes or hours, don't make new terms). But it strives for a level of complexity above Frontier, which was fairly simple. Frontier was great because you could go anywhere, including down onto planets. But it was also a vast empty sea of nothing in many cases. Compare that to Freelancer, which was too shallow but nailed the exploration part.

Originally Posted by frightlever

People clamored for a new Elite for years. Apparently he was WORKING on a new Elite for years. I think if he was able to deliver a new Elite, one worth our time, he would have by now.

Except a direct remake of Elite would probably be crap, because Elite was very simplistic and we generally expect more substance from games these days. I'd much rather a well crafted universe like Freelancer with some of the complexity (but not the interface!) from the X series.

Your idea of reasonable is vastly different to mine, man. Personally, I *like* my consumer rights not to be stamped on by rich men but each to their own!

In a perfect world, there would be no oversight whatsoever and we could re-register steam keys whenever the hell we want.

In practice, the publishers (and distributors) won't like that. He proposes ideas that are fairly reasonable. Maybe a bit too extreme in some cases, but all the ideas are pretty decent and actually give us more "rights". And a dedicated rental service for PC games would be great (Pay 5-10 bucks to rent Modern Warfare 5 for the weekend to continue the story, return it since you don't care about the MP).

And the "sell partial game you can upgrade to full later' idea is actually really good and has been used on the PSN a few times. I picked up the latest Fight Night game for dirt cheap since all I wanted was the botmatches.

But this is DEFINITELY a different subject (and one that has been discussed ad nauseum in the past).

Steam: Gundato
PSN: Gundato
If you want me on either service, I suggest PMing me here first to let me know who you are.

I don't know! I'd like to think you find out what people want before asking them for a million quid though?

But I dunno. I don't know what he could do to make a modern Elite so special beyond really making Elite+a bit shinier (thinking along the lines of what we did with Jet Set Willy Online, keep it as same-as-you-can but whack in online functionality). Time has hardly stood still and what was once a revelation in code is pretty much a Facebook game now so can having everything server based + pretty graphics really cut it anyway in a world where Eve, Drifter and lord knows how many other variations, riffs and extensions exist?

Take out the name Elite, take out Braben from the equation and are we really left with anything that you can't get elsewhere? I don't know, genuinely. I can't see it but maybe that's because I'm not looking at this right.

As much as I'd like to say it's true - it's not. They have abandoned this strategy with DooM2. DooM2 was sold due to D1 hype. People were playing the shit out of D1 shareware, even multiplayer. Striking the right balance between "not enough" and "too fun to buy a full version" can be tricky.

As much as I'd like to say it's true - it's not. They have abandoned this strategy with DooM2. DooM2 was sold due to D1 hype. People were playing the shit out of D1 shareware, even multiplayer. Striking the right balance between "not enough" and "too fun to buy a full version" can be tricky.

Yeah. That is why I didn't really go into the shareware games.

The most recent Fight Night came out a few years back (and probably flopped ;p) but the model of "Pay for MP, SP, or botmatches" was perfect. Gave me exactly what I wanted and let me save a decent amount of cash.

I think Starhawk (which also flopped :p) is doing something similar by having SP and MP components.

Steam: Gundato
PSN: Gundato
If you want me on either service, I suggest PMing me here first to let me know who you are.

In a perfect world, there would be no oversight whatsoever and we could re-register steam keys whenever the hell we want.

In practice, the publishers (and distributors) won't like that. He proposes ideas that are fairly reasonable. Maybe a bit too extreme in some cases, but all the ideas are pretty decent and actually give us more "rights". And a dedicated rental service for PC games would be great (Pay 5-10 bucks to rent Modern Warfare 5 for the weekend to continue the story, return it since you don't care about the MP).

And the "sell partial game you can upgrade to full later' idea is actually really good and has been used on the PSN a few times. I picked up the latest Fight Night game for dirt cheap since all I wanted was the botmatches.

But this is DEFINITELY a different subject (and one that has been discussed ad nauseum in the past).

I liked the concept Microsoft tried with Fable 2 (and think 3) where you could buy the game in chapters. It was basically a pay to progress further into the content. Lowers the barrier to get people to try your game beyond a demo and allows people on a budget to buy the game in chunks. Kinda feel once Counterstrike and Day of Defeat had their own releases Half Life got that separation. I had originally bought Half Life for the simple fact to play CS beta (2.0 or around there is when I started).